Government’s Role in America’s Overwhelming Obesity Problem

Monday, October 15, 2012

Buttons fly off
shirts, pant seats tear, and chairs break in the Subway commercial that’s made
us all laugh too many times because of the “button-popping consequences”
suffered by fast-food eating Americans in the video. While the commercial’s
effects are obviously dramatized, there is one point the video makes that’s
undeniable. America
is getting fatter, and fatter, and fatter. In fact, according to the NationalCenter for Health Statistics, in 2008,
34.3% of American adults were considered obese, up from 13.4% in 1960. Also,
the American Journal of Preventive
Medicine is predicting that 42% will be obese in 2030.

As Americans, we,
and our politicians, have begun to look at obesity as a national crisis. Unfortunately,
the government has started to take it upon itself to solve this crisis which,
in reality, shouldn’t involve the government at all. It’s up to individuals,
not the government, to control their eating habits and watch their own weight.
The government simply cannot regulate what we consume as Americans for three
basic reasons: (1) obesity can’t be stopped with one simple law, there are two
many factors contributing to it, (2) the government is largely uneducated and
doesn’t have adequate resources to understand and effectively put obesity
legislation into effect, and (3) regulating our diet takes away our basic right
of deciding what we consume.

No
matter what you may have heard, there is no one single cause of this recent
spike in obesity. In a July 2012 study published in the Union Leader, researchers found that the leading contributor to the
obesity spike has been the decline in smoking.Cigarettes help extinguish
hunger, and when smokers stopped smoking they began eating more and more. However,
the smoking decline still only accounted for 2% of the total obesity increase.
In addition, the study concluded that the contributions of fast-food prices,
grocery prices, and restaurant prevalence to the obesity spike were all
statistically insignificant. That’s right; the excepted suspects of the obesity
crisis really had almost no effect at all. If there are hundreds of equally
important factors contributing to obesity, the government will never be able to
pinpoint one of them with a law and expect obesity rates to fall. Our
government shouldn’t be wasting its time trying to pass ineffective laws on
obesity when there are much more pressing political issues at hand. It’s time
for “politicians and bureaucrats (to) turn their attention to other matters”
than obesity, said one USA Today
editorial author. With so many contributors, the government needs to understand
it isn’t possible to pass effective legislation on obesity and move on to more
important issues.

The
American government is also behind-the-times and even misinformed when it comes
to comprehending and putting anti-obesity laws into effect. First off,
“scientific understanding of human nutrition, diet needs, and the causes of
obesity improves constantly. The government is ill-equipped to understand and integrate
these advances into its legislation or regulation.” said Marshall Manson, vice
president of Public Affairs at the Center for Individual Freedom. With the
science behind obesity always changing and new discoveries being made, it would
be impossible to pass a law and then expect it to be applicable even a year
later. Sooner or later a discovery or advancement will be made by researchers
that would make an obesity law inaccurate and controversial. Evidence of this
can be found in 1970, when the US Department of Agriculture published dietary
guidelines that encouraged Americans to eat more low-fat foods. However,
Americans compensated for this by simply eating greater quantities of healthier
food. Although calories from fat sources decreased over the next 30 years, the
number of fat calories consumed by a person went up because of the overall
calorie increase. So by trying to combat fatty foods, the government ended up
increasing fat calorie consumption per person. This is just one example of our
misinformed government promoting completely ineffective, and somewhat ironic,
measures. The Onion, a satirical new source, went as far as to say the most effective way the government could reduce obesity is by changing the definition of obesity so it would include less Americans.
There is no need for our government to try to predict the scientific
course of obesity and pass legislation that will still be current and
applicable ten years from now.

Government
regulation of our diets would also be taking away fundamental freedoms that are
granted to us. One of these “is the right to choose what we put on our plates
and in our goblets…,” says Manson, “but anti-food extremists would gladly take
away that freedom and mandate our diet in order to save us from ourselves. It
is time for zealous anti-food advocates to understand that it is not the
federal government’s job to save us from ourselves by making our choices for
us.” A society where the government makes personal choices for us takes away
some of one of our most basic freedoms: the freedom of choice. Also, as has
been the case in the past, many Americans will still eat whatever they want to
eat, not what the government tells them to. For example, take New York City’s 2008 law requiring restaurant
chains to post calorie counts on their menus.

Researchers at New YorkUniversity
studied the effects of this law, and were unable to detect any sort of change
in calories purchased per customer after the law was put into effect. No matter
how much regulation the government tries to put into effect, the American
public will always be able to find loopholes around it.

Supporters
of government regulation to confront obesity use two main arguments to defend
their stance. The first is that America
is overweight and obesity is a problem that needs to be confronted as
efficiently and effectively as possible, which is through the government. While
America
is undeniably overweight, government regulation of our diets isn’t the most
efficient solution. As was referenced earlier, there is neither one cause nor
one solution to obesity. In the words of US
News’ Michael Marlow: “instead of wasting resources on inadequate
solutions, consumers should return to the market for the innovative solutions,
like healthy foods, gyms, and nutrition centers.” Although using the government
may seem like the easiest way to reach the American public, it would provide a
very inefficient, limited solution because of the lack of individual
flexibility the law would have.

IS IT WORTH IT??

Second, government regulation supporters argue
that the government has many more resources to combat obesity than private
organizations and therefore are best suited to play this role. However, also as
was revealed earlier, the science behind obesity is progressing at a rate that
the government won’t be able to keep up with. Though they certainly would have
much greater budget flexibility and publicity, the government simply would not
be able to keep with the advancements of private organizations. By the time
laws would finally be passed, science will have transformed so much that parts
of the law would not longer be accurate. Private organizations are the ones
doing this research, and therefore have more credibility to promote
anti-obesity measures. But in the end, it all comes down to individuals being
conscious about their weights.

The
government should absolutely not regulate our diets to combat the growing
problem of American obesity. Simple laws cannot even come close to addressing
all the contributors to obesity. The causes are much too complex and vast to
ever do this. The government is also, unfortunately, somewhat uneducated and
doesn’t have the resources that private organizations and scientists have to
pass effective legislation. Obesity science is constantly evolving, and passed
laws can’t evolve in the same way. Lastly, regulating our diet takes away the
basic freedom of choice that we were granted by our founding fathers. It’s
simply not right for the government to take this freedom away. Obese or not,
the government’s influence should not be visible in our meals.

The correct, and
only, way to solve obesity is through healthy choices made by each individual
citizen.